Making Acreage Report Data Public

I commented on this decision back in February, but this article gives a bit more detail from the FSA side. I remain confused over the lines being drawn between releasing FSA data on farmers and prohibiting the release of other data. As usual, our political/legal system doesn't produce the sort of logical results which would comfort a rigid personality like me.

Farm Bill Status

Lots of links available on the farm bill, particularly through EWG, who also released 2007 payments, but this from Politico is interesting. I'm still hoping someone will pick up my idea about graduated payment reductions. Seems as if by switching the terms of debate they could confuse everyone so everyone could claim a victory, then see what happens in the administration of it. Oh well--doomed to be ignored, I guess, alas.

Former ASCSer Bjorlie

Interesting obit for Arnold Bjorlie, whom I knew as an area director in DC, focusing on his involvement in Non-Partisan League politics in ND

Loo Paper for the Bog

That's one of the hurdles in setting up a new English-language paper in Abu Dhabi--providing the infrastructure people are used to. ("Bog" being British slang for toilet") See the NYTimes article.

Interesting when the newspapers are reporting declines in circulation, someone thinks it wise to set up a new one in the Middle East and make it English.

I love the phrase, and I think it provides an insight on crossing cultural boundaries.

Slowly Up the Learning Curve--Video Seminars

Here's a discussion by John Quiggin at Crooked Timber of his experience holding a video-seminar.

On the one hand, that's the way to go. (John notes the traveling he would have to do to do the seminar in person, but not the energy involved. If "slow food" is good, so is "e-learning").

On the other hand, there have been many video-conferencing trials over the years. I remember doing video conferences between DC and Kansas City several times--it had too much overhead costs for the advantages. I remember trying a version of a video-phone in the late 80's--wasn't really useful. A few more years of Moore's law and maybe technology will be able to fulfill this particular promise. But still, , people are animals, and being there is part of our thing.

How Do You Tell the Farmer--A Big Belly?

That seems to be the implication of this story on the "Farmer Wants a Wife" series on CW. The 30-year Missouri farmer doesn't look like a farmer, because he's got abs. Another mark of change--I remember the day when no farmer of my acquaintance had a belly. Course, that was before tractors with enclosed cabs, etc.

Republican Has Kind Words for Dems

From Rep. Tom Davis's interview but read the whole thing:

"John Koskinen did a lot of this [work] {i.e., IT} under President Clinton, and he was excellent. The first thing I’d say to the administration is make sure management is an important part of OMB. Consult with leaders of both parties. Get people who understand government and understand how it works. Clay Johnson is a great guy and has ideas, but he has not been in government before. You need somebody who can mold [government and the private sector] together, and that’s something that has been lacking.

Steve Kelman understood it pretty well on a procedural side and on the contracting side, and Al Gore understood that you needed to change the way government works. Democrats believe in government. A lot of our guys just don’t want government, and that makes it hard because they’re just trying to tear down government. Well, government is here to stay, and a lot of us can see the wonderful things government can do. You just want to do it right. If you’re going to have government, and it’s not going to get any smaller in terms of its directives, let’s make it work and make it efficient.

Anti-Agribusiness

For an interesting attack on agribusiness, read this.
I found this bit interesting:

When we were growing up, beef was, for the most part, grass fed and local. Family farmers took their sale cattle to either the auction barn or the stockyards, and there were a few in every county. The local stockyard then delivered the livestock to a larger facility in the closest city - St. Joseph and Kansas City, Missouri were cowtowns with bustling stockyards and as a child I climbed the pens in both. As a teenager, my best friend was the daughter of the local stockyard owner, and we frequently hitched rides with her brother who drove the semi to the stockyards in KC. (That's how small-town cheerleaders scored weed without ruining their reputations - to the three members of my high school graduating class of 18 who read this blog, now you know our secret.) Some farmers sold all of their beef to a specific butcher for a niche market. My maternal grandparents were kosher farmers and my Great Uncle was a kosher butcher.

The author covers lots of bases, many of which I disagree with. I'll only cite one point on health: there probably are no statistics available, but my sense is that a concentrated food industry makes screwups more serious and much more visible, but it may still be safer than a decentralized food industry of the past. My comparison would be to the aviation industry--one mistake can kill hundreds of people on a big plane and make headlines all around the world. But the reality seems to be that general aviation, the small planes, are much more likely to have fatal accidents and much more dangerous.

Identity Checks and Government Blogging

Here's an article on changes being made by DHS in handling their no-fly list and here's the DHS blog's post on it . (If I understand, Ted Kennedy gets stopped all the time, because there's a suspected terrorist (or at least someone on the no-fly list) with a similar name, so they have to establish Ted isn't the same person. Now, under the proposal, if Ted allows his date of birth to be added to the airlines data, he can go right through.)


The proposal makes sense to me, but not to the first four comments on the blog. Maybe they aren't into genealogy, where you have to distinguish among multiple John Rippeys or even worse, William Smiths. Much less try to reconcile the data between ASCS and SCS to determine whether each agency was dealing with the same people. But then, I'm just a retired bureaucrat who tends to trust bureaucracies, at least in some instances.

Economics Articles Today

Seems to be a big day for economics.

Roger Lowenstein has a very interesting article in the NY Times Mag on companies like Moody's which rated the securities backed by pools of mortgages. It's even clear enough for a codger to understand. What struck me was the play of wits between banks and rating agencies--banks want to get the highest rating for a mix of mortgages, so they game the system and the rating agency may or may not catch them. Then people got sucked into assuming the future would look like the past, which it didn't.

Tyler Cowen has a column in the Times arguing that free trade in rice would help everyone. I normally like his writing, but this was confusing to me. See for yourself.

And Anthony Faiola has the first article in a Post series called "The New Economics of Hunger". I liked it for its even-handedness, but especially for the graphics in the print edition. The most space was devoted to the comparative imports and exports of grains by world region (clue--North America exports the majority of the world's grain). But only in the area of 10 percent of each grain is traded, most is grown and consumed in the same country.